OUT OF- DOORS 




52x111 ~\~ 



&5&S 






^^^^^H 

^^^^^^w 



^-^V^M:^ — 



: :^- 



«s 



''-•:- ■-^'•'"■■'---'.■--"V'"'' - 



eS - SSSSw ' ' 




Class ___ 



<? 



Book. ,jMlA2. 

Copyright N° 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



God Almighty first planted a garden. 

— Bacon, 



OUT-OF-DOORS 




Quotations from Nature Lovers 
selected and illustrated 

by 

ROSALIE ARTHUR 




NEW YORK 
Dodge Publishing Company 

40 West 13 th Street 



THE LIIRAKY O 
0Or*ORESS, 

Two Cones RECtivto 

SEP. IS 1502 

jCowflMOHT «nn»y 
CLASS H-XXft N«. 

cow b. 






The Compiler desires to thank Mrs. Royal 
Cortissoz (Ellen Mackay Hutchinson), 
Miss Helen Gray Cone, Dr. Henry van 
Dyke, Mr. Thomas Bailey Aldrich, and Mr. 
Arthur Ketchum for courteous permission 
to use selections from their works. 

Thanks are also due Messrs Charles 
Scribner's Sons, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 
Dodd, Mead & Co., E. P. Dutton & Co., The 
J. B. Lippincott Co., Small, Maynard & Co. 
( Poems by Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey 
-* 'Songs from Vagabondia"), Publishers of 
"Harper's Magazine", D. Appleton & Co. 
( Publishers of Bryant's Complete Works),' 
Lothrop Publishing Co., John Lane ("Dream 
Days" and "The Golden Age," Kenneth 
Grahame, and "Later Poems," Alice Mey- 
nell), and Doubleday, Page & Co. for the use 
of material copyrighted by them. 

The selections from Lowell, Burroughs, 
Sill, Edith M. Thomas, Whittier, Lucy 
Larcom, Margaret Deland, Ellen Mackay 
Hutchinson, Longfellow, Emerson, Aldrich, 
Holmes, Celia Thaxter, Hawthorne and John 
Fiske are used by kind permission of, and by 
soecial arrangement with, Houghton, Mifflin 
&Co. 



[Out-of-Doors 6] 
Copyright, 1902 

by 
DODGE PUBLISHING COMPANY 






N> 



And though we should be grateful for good 
houses, there is, after all, no house like God's 
out-of-doors. — Stevenson. 

7 




Now fades the last long streak of snow; 
Now bourgeons every maze of quick 
About the flowering squares, and thick 

By ashen roots the violets blow. 

Tennyson 




Out - of- Doors ii 

■■■■ !■ Ill ■llll- .III.IIIIIIW ■ ■ ■ l ll lll lB M I WMI I III IMMMMMaMMBHMIBrt 

Those awful powers on man that wait, 
On man, the beggar or the king, 
To hovel bare or hall of state 
A magic ring that masters fate 
With each succeeding birthday bring. 



Therein are set four jewels rare, 
Pearl winter, summer's ruby blaze, 
Spring's emerald, and than all more fair 
Fall's pensive opal, doomed to bear 
A heart of fire, bedreamed with haze. 



To him the simple spell that knows 
The spirits of the ring to sway, 
Fresh power with every sunrise flows, 
And royal pursuivants are those 
That fly his mandates to obey. 



But he that with a slackened will 
Dreams of things past or things to be, 
From him the charm is slipping still, 
And drops, ere he suspect the ill, 
Into the inexorable sea. 

— Lowell. 



12 Out-of-Doors 

The year's at the spring, 
And day's at the morn ; 
Morning's at seven ; 
The hillside's dew-pearled ; 
The lark's on the wing ; 
The snail's on the thorn ; 
God's in His heaven, — 
All's right with the world. 

— Browning. 



The first sparrow of Spring ! The year begin- 
ning with younger hope than ever ! The faint 
silvery warblings heard over the partially bare 
and moist fields from the blue-bird, the song- 
sparrow, and the red-wing, as if the last flakes of 
Winter tinkled as they fell ! 

— Thoreau. 



And yonder bluebird with the earth tinge on 
his breast and the sky tinge on his back, — did he 
come down out of heaven on that bright March 
morning when he told us so softly and plain- 
tively that if we pleased, Spring had come ? 

— Burroughs, 



Out - of- Doors 13 



The masterful wind was up and out, shouting 
and chasing, the lord of the morning. Poplars 
swayed and tossed with a roaring swish ; dead 
leaves sprang aloft, and whirled into space ; and 
all the clear-swept heaven seemed to thrill with 
sound like a great harp. It was one of the first 
awakenings of the year. The earth stretched 
herself, smiling in her sleep ; and everything 
leapt and pulsed to the stir of the giant's move- 
ment. 

— Kenneth Grahame. 



Better still do we find it to wander off into the 
outlying woods ; to taste the ebbing life-blood of 
the maple with lips against the wound, and thrill 
with its subtle suggestions ; to shake the golden 
dust from drooping tassels of the alder, and part 
the dingy mat of leaves in search of the swell- 
ing, pink-tipped buds of the arbutus ; to drink the 
crystal-cold brook water out of the hollow of the 
hand, and push bare chilled fingers into a net- 
work of clinging roots in the damp, fresh-smell- 
ing earth. 

— Elaine Goodale. 



14 Out - of ■ Doors 



SPRING SONG. 

Make me over, mother April, 
When the sap begins to stir ! 
When thy flowery hand delivers 
All the mountain-prisoned rivers, 
And thy great heart beats and quivers 
To revive the days that were, 
Make me over, mother April, 
When the sap begins to stir ! 

Take my dust and all my dreaming, 
Count my heart-beats one by one, 
Send them where the winters perish ; 
Then some golden noon recherish 
And restore them in the sun, 
Flower and scent and dust and dreaming, 
With their heart-beats every one ! 

For I have no choice of being, 
When the sap begins to climb, — 
Strong insistence, sweet intrusion, 
Vasts and verges of illusion, — 
So I win, to time's confusion, 
The one perfect pearl of time, 
Joy and joy and joy forever, 
Till the sap forgets to climb ! 



Out - of- Doors 15 

Let me taste the old immortal 
Indolence of life once more ; 
Not recalling nor foreseeing, 
Let the great slow joys of being 
Well my heart through as of yore ! 
Let me taste the old immortal 
Indolence of life once more ! 



Only make me over, April, 
When the sap begins to stir ! 
Make me man or make me woman, 
Make me oaf or ape or human, 
Cup of flower or cone of fir ; 
Make me anything but neuter 
When the sap begins to stir ! 

— Bliss Carman. 



Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring 
Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling ; 

The Bird of Time has but a little way 
To flutter — and the Bird is on the Wing. 

— Omar Khayyam* 



i6 Out ■ of- Doors 



TO A WATERFOWL. 



Whither, midst falling dew, 
While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, 
Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue 

Thy solitary way ? 



Vainly the fowler's eye 
Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, 
As, darkly painted on the crimson sky 

Thy figure floats along. 



Seek'st thou the plashy brink 
Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, 
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink 

On the chafed ocean side ? 



There is a Power whose care 
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,- 
The desert and illimitable air, — 

Lone wandering, but not lost. 



Out - of- Doors 17 

All day thy wings have fanned, 
At that far height, the thin, cold atmosphere, 
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, 

Though the dark night is near. 



And soon that toil shall cease, 
Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest, 
And scream among thy fellows ; reeds shall bend, 

Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest. 



Thou 'rt gone, the abyss of heaven 
Hath swallowed up thy form ; yet, on my heart 
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given, 

And shall not soon depart : 



He, who, from zone to zone, 
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain 

flight, 
In the long way that I must tread alone, 
Will lead my steps aright. 

— Bryant 



18 Out- of- Doors 



Dip down upon the northern shore, 
O sweet new-year, delaying long ; 
Thou doest expectant nature wrong ; 

Delaying long, delay no more. 



What stays thee from the clouded noons, 
Thy sweetness from its proper place ? 
Can trouble live with April days, 

Or sadness in the summer moons ? 



Bring orchis, bring the foxglove spire, 
The little speedwell's darling blue, 
Deep tulips dash'd with fiery dew, 

Laburnums, dropping-wells of fire. 



O thou, new-year, delaying long, 
Delayest the sorrow in my blood, 
That longs to burst a frozen bud, 

And flood a fresher throat with song. 

— Tennyson, 





ndered lonel y as~a ltfgmF 



That floatsno^Tnghro^er-vales and hills, 
hen all at once I saw a crowd,— 
\fJL host^pf golden ^daffodils. 

Wordsworth 







Out-of-Doors 21 



AT EASTER-TIDE. 

At Easter-tide, when lilies blow 
For font and altar, virgin things, 

When spikes of maple scarlet show, 
And thin clouds white as angel's wings, 
While some fresh voice the message flings- 

" The Lord is risen ! " — from long ago 
Rise purified the tombSd Springs 

At Easter-tide, when lilies blow. 



Oh, when the hallowed hour not brings 
Those gloried ghosts, whose brows we know, 
Nor I o'er change and distance throw 
In midnight prayer an arm that clings, 
Ah then, the deep-toned bell that rings 
I shall not hear, nor hear whatso 

The clear young voice triumphant sings, 
At Easter-tide, when lilies blow ! 

— Helen Gray Cone, 



22 Out - of - Doors 



Let mystery have its place in you ; do not 
be always turning up your whole soil with the 
ploughshare of self-examination, but leave a little 
fallow corner in your heart ready for any seed the 
winds may bring, and reserve a nook of shadow 
for the passing bird ; keep a place in your heart 
for the unexpected guest, an altar for the un- 
known God. Then if a bird sing among your 
branches, do not be too eager to tame it. If you 
are conscious of something new — thought or feel- 
ing — wakening in the depths of your being, do not 
be in a hurry to let in light upon it, to look at it ; 
let the springing germ have the protection of 
being forgotten, hedge it round with quiet, and 
do not break in upon its darkness ; let it take 
shape and grow, and not a word of your happi- 
ness to anyone ! 

— AmieVs Journal. 



Out - of- Doors 23 



Ah, how wonderful is the advent of the 
Spring ! — the great annual miracle of the blossom- 
ing of Aaron's rod, repeated on myriads and 
myriads of branches ! — the gentle progression and 
growth of herbs, flowers, trees, — gentle and yet 
irrepressible, — which no force can stay, no 
violence restrain, like love, that wins its way 
and cannot be withstood by any human power, 
because itself is divine power. If Spring came 
but once a century, instead of once a year, or 
burst forth with the sound of an earthquake, and 
not in silence, what wonder and expectation 
would there be in all hearts to behold the miracu- 
lous change ! 

— Longfellow, 



I saw wild anemones, and heard birds piping 
on the boughs ; the delicate sunshine of the 
north was sifting through them, and dropping 
about on the grass as lightly as if it felt that it 
was taking a liberty. Down in a hollow, gleam- 
ing white in the creases between cushions of 
moss, I saw wandering patches of snow, for the 
spring had been late, and warm weather had 
come on suddenly. 

—Jean Inglclow. 



24 Out - of- Doors 



That is the saddest of thoughts — as we grow 
older the romance fades, and all things become 
commonplace. 

Half our lives are spent in wishing for to-mor- 
row, the other half in wishing for yesterday. 

Wild-flowers alone never become common- 
place. The white wood-sorrel at the foot of the 
oak, the violet in the hedge of the vale, the 
thyme on the wind-swept downs, they were as 
fresh this year as last, as dear to-day as twenty 
years since, even dearer, for they grow now, as 
it were, in the earth we have made for them 
of our hopes, our prayers, our emotions, our 
thoughts. 

— Richard Jeffries. 



Out - of- Doors 25 



THE » OLD, OLD STORY." 



When all the world is young, lad, 

And all the trees are green ; 
And every goose a swan, lad, 

And every lass a queen, — 
Then hey for boot and horse, lad, 

And round the world away ; 
Young blood must have its course, lad, 

And every dog his day. 

"When all the world is old, lad, 

And all the trees are brown ; 
And all the sport is stale, lad, 

And all the wheels run down, — 
Creep home and take your place there, 

The spent and maimed among : 
God grant you find one face there 

You loved when all was young. 

— Charles Kingsley. 



26 Out - of - Doors 



SONG. 

For the tender beech and the sapling oak, 

That grow by the shadowy rill, 
You may cut down both at a single stroke, 

You may cut down which you will. 

But this you must know, that as long as they 
grow, 
"Whatever change may be, 
You can never teach either oak or beech 
To be aught but a greenwood tree. 

— Thomas Love Peacock . 



What is the charm which wakes 

The bud, the flower, the fruit, from the cold 

ground ? 
What is the power which makes 
With song the groves, with song the fields, 

resound? 
One spell there is, so strong to move ; 
Some call it Spring, and others Love. 

— Lewis Morris. 



Out - of- Doors 27 



In these vernal seasons of the year when the 
air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and 
sullenness against nature not to go out and see 
her riches, and partake of her rejoicing with 
heaven and earth. — Milton. 



How happy the trees must be to hear the song 
of birds again in their branches ! After the silence 
and the leaflessness, to have the birds back once 
more and to feel them busy at the nest-building ; 
how glad to give them the moss and fibres and 
the crutch of the boughs to build in ! 

— Richard Jeffries. 



Turn, turn my wheel ! All life is brief ; 
What now is bud will soon be leaf, 

What now is leaf will soon decay ; 
The wind blows east, the wind blows west ; 
The blue eggs in the robin's nest 
Will soon have wings and beak and breast, 
And flutter and fly away. 

— Longfellow. 



28 Out-of-Doors 



For winter's rains and ruins are over, 

And all the season of snows and sins ; 
The days dividing lover and lover, 

The light that loses, the night that wins ; 
And time remembered is grief forgotten, 
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten, 
And in green underwood and cover 

Blossom by blossom the spring begins. 

— Swinburne. 



And after April, when May follows, 
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows ! 
Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge 
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover 
Blossoms and dewdrops — at the bent spray's 

edge — 
That's the wise thrush ; he sings each song twice 

over, 
Lest you should think he never could recapture 
The first, fine careless rapture ! 

— Browning. 









Dear common flower, thai grow'st besidAhe-Way, 
Fringing the dusty road with harmless gqlfig^cl. 
First pledge of blithesome May. 

Met 



*ss 





/ 




Out - of- Doors 31 



That long, clear, cool note, like the arc de- 
scribed by a bright new sickle, — that's the mead- 
ow-lark ! I know well the springy pastures 
where he hunts his breakfast, the wind-crisped 
pools where he sometimes dips his bill. 

—Edith M. Thomas. 



Do you remember that fair little wood of silver 
birches on the West Branch of the Neversink, 
somewhat below the place where the Biscuit 
Brook runs in ? There is a mossy terrace raised 
a couple of feet above the water of a long, still 
pool ; and a very pleasant spot for a friendship- 
fire on the shingly beach below you ; and a plenty 
of painted trilliums and yellow violets and white 
foam-flowers to adorn your woodland banquet, if 
it be spread in the month of May, when Mistress 
Nature is given over to embroidery. 

* — Henry van Dyke, 

* From " The Ruling Passion." Copyright xgoi by Charles Scribner's 



32 Out - of - Doors 



*AN ANGLER'S WISH, 



When tulips bloom in Union Square, 
And timid breaths of vernal air 

Go wandering down the dusty town, 
Like children lost in Vanity Fair ; 

When every long, unlovely row 
Of westward houses stand aglow, 

And leads the eyes toward sunset skies 
Beyond the hills where green trees grow ; 

Then weary seems the street parade, 
And weary books, and weary trade : 

I'm only wishing to go a-fishing ; 
For this the month of May was made. 

II 

I guess the pussy-willows now 
Are creeping out on every bough 

Along the brook ; and robins look 
For early worms behind the plough. 

*From " Little Rivers." Copyright, 1897, by Charles Scribners' Sons. 



Out - of - Doors 33 

The thistle-birds have changed their dun 
For yellow coats, to match the sun ; 

And in the same array of flame 
The Dandelion Show's begun. 

The flocks of young anemones 

Are dancing round the budding trees : 

Who can help wishing to go a-fishing 
In days as full of joys as these ? 



Ill 



I think the meadow-lark's clear sound 
Leaks upward slowly from the ground, 
While on the wing, the bluebirds ring 
Their wedding-bells to woods around. 

The flirting chewink calls his dear 
Behind the bush ; and very near, 

Where water flows, where green grass grows, 
Song-sparrows gently sing, "Good cheer." 

And, best of all, through twilight calm 
The hermit-thrush repeats his psalm. 

How much I'm wishing to go a-fishing 
In days so sweet with music's balm ! 



34 Out-of-Doors 

IV 

'Tis not a proud desire of mine ; 
I ask for nothing superfine ; 

No heavy weight, no salmon great, 
To break the record, or my line: 

Only an idle little stream, 

Whose amber waters softly gleam, 

Where I may wade through woodland shade, 
And cast the fly, and loaf, and dream: 

Only a trout or two, to dart 

From foaming pools and try my art : 

No more I'm wishing — old-fashioned fishing, 
And just a day on Nature's heart. 

— Henry van Dyke. 



Nature yields nothing to the sybarite. The 
meadow glows with buttercups in spring, the 
hedges are green, the woods lovely; but these 
are not to be enjoyed in their full significance 
unless you have traversed the same places when 
bare, and have watched the slow fulfilment of the 
flowers. 

— Richard Jeffries. 




pple blossoms, budding, blowing, 

In the soft May air: 
ups with sunshine overflowing, — 
Flakes of fragrance, drifting, snowing, 
owering everywhere. " 

Lucy Larcom 




Out - of- Doors 37 



Gazing up into the exquisitely pure and tender 
sky, behind an overhanging cloud of blossoms, 
heavy with sweet odors, who would not divine 
the hush and mystery of summer days, "that 
scarce dare breathe, they are so beautiful.' ' And 
while we are wrapt in this delicious, dreamy re- 
pose, we question idly of unimagined splendors, 
and give ourselves up to the luxury of -wondering 
whether long vistas of never-ceasing bloom, or 
orchards mixed along the open way with grassy 
fields and green stretches of woodland, make the 
perfect paradise. 

— Elaine Goodale. 



The truths of nature are one eternal change, 
one infinite variety. There is no bush on the 
face of the globe exactly like another bush ; there 
are no two trees in the forest whose boughs bend 
into the same network, nor two leaves on the 
same tree which could not be told one from the 
other, nor two waves in the sea exactly alike. 

— Ruskin. 



38 Out-of-Doors 



Earth to earth ! That was the frank note, the 
joyous summons of the day . . . when boon Na- 
ture, reticent no more, was singing that full- 
throated song of hers that thrills and claims con- 
trol of every fibre. The air was wine ; the moist 
earth-smell, wine ; the lark's song, the wafts 
from the cow-shed at top of the field, the pant 
and smoke of a distant train, — all were wine, — or 
song, was it ? or odor, this unity they all blended 
into ? 

— Kenneth Grahame. 



Out-of-Doors 39 



We have been cowslipping to-day in a little 
wood dignified by the name of the Hirschwald, 
because it is the happy hunting-ground of innu- 
merable deer who fight there in the autumn even- 
ings, calling each other out to combat with 
bayings that ring through the silence and send 
agreeable shivers through the lonely listener. I 
often walk there in September, late in the even- 
ing, and, sitting on a fallen tree, listen fascinated 
to their angry cries. 

We made cowslip balls sitting on the grass. 
The babies had never seen such things nor had 
imagined anything half so sweet. The Hirsch- 
wald is a little open wood of silver birches and 
springy turf starred with flowers, and there is a 
tiny stream meandering amiably about it and 
decking itself in June with yellow flags. 

— "Elizabeth and her German Garden** 



40 Out-of-Doors 



AUF WIEDERSEHEN ! 

The little gate was reached at last, 
Half hid in lilacs down the lane ; 
She pushed it wide, and, as she past, 
A wistful look she backward cast, 
And said, — " Auf wiedersehen ! " 



With hand on latch, a vision white 

Lingered reluctant, and again 
Half doubting if she did aright, 
Soft as the dews that fell that night, 
She said, — " Auf wiedersehen ! " 



The lamp's clear gleam flits up the stair ; 

I linger in delicious pain ; 
Ah, in that chamber, whose rich air 
To breathe in thought I scarcely dare, 

Thinks she, — " Auf wiedersehen ! " 



'Tis thirteen years ; once more I press 

The turf that silences the lane ; 
I hear the rustle of her dress, 
I smell the lilacs, and — ah, yes, 
I hear " Auf wiedersehen ! " 



Out-of-Doors 41 

Sweet piece of bashful maiden art! 

The English words had seemed too fain, 
But these — they drew us heart to heart, 
Yet held us tenderly apart ; 

She said, " Auf wiedersehen ! ". 

—Lowell. 



WITH THREE FLOWERS. 

Herewith I send you three pressed withered 

flowers : 
This one was white with golden star ; this, blue 
As Capri's cave ; that purple and shot through 
With sunset-orange. Where the Duomo towers 
In diamond air, and under pendent bowers 
The Arno glides, this faded violet grew 
On Landor's grave; from Landor's heart it drew 
Its clouded azure in the long spring hours. 
Within the shadow of the Pyramid 
Of Caius Cestius was the daisy found, 
White as the soul of Keats in Paradise. 
The pansy — there were hundreds of them hid 
In the thick grass that folded Shelley's mound, 
Guarding his ashes with most lovely eyes. 

— Aldrich, 



42 Out-of-Doors 



THE RHODORA. 

In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes, 
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods, 
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook, 
To please the desert and the sluggish brook. 
The purple petals, fallen in the pool, 
Made the black water with their beauty gay ; 
Here mightthe red-bird come his plumes to cool, 
And court the flower that cheapens his array. 
Rhodora ! if the sages ask thee why 
This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, 
Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing, 
Then Beauty is its own excuse for being : 
Why wert thou there, O rival of the rose ! 
I never thought to ask, I never knew : 
But in my simple ignorance, suppose 
The self-same Power that brought me there 
brought you. 

— Emerson. 



Out-of-Doors 43 



You never get so close to the birds as when you 
are wading quietly down a little river, casting 
your fly deftly under the branches for the wary 
trout, but ever on the lookout for all the various 
pleasant things that nature has to bestow upon 
you. Here you shall come upon the cat-bird at 
her"morning bath, and hear her sing, in a clump of 
pussy-willows, that low, tender, confidential song 
which she keeps for the hours of domestic inti- 
macy. The spotted sandpiper will run along the 
stones before you, crying, " Wet-feet, wet-feet!" 
and bowing and teetering in the friendliest man- 
ner, as if to show you the way to the best pools. 

* — Henry van Dyke, 



O flower-de-luce, bloom on, and let the river 

Linger to kiss thy feet ! 
O flower of song, bloom on, and make forever 

The world more fair and sweet. 

— Longfellow. 

*From "Little Rivers." Copyright 1897, by Charles Scribner's Sons. 



44 Out - of- Doors 



A RONDEL OF PARTING. 

You leave it when spring blossoms fall, 
The old house where the roses grew. 

You gave them from the garden wall, 
Your roses faint of breath and hue, 
Whose lovely like I never knew. 

Can I my flock of memories call 

To leave it when spring blossoms fall, 
The old house where the roses grew ? 

No, no, they flit about the hall, 
And beat their wings, and cry for you. 

Be still : no more, no more at all, 
She enters now : apart we two 

Shall see in dreams, when late leaves fall, 
The House of Youth, where roses grew ! 

— Helen Gray Cone, 



Yet Ah, that Spring should vanish with the Rose ! 
That Youth's sweet-scented manuscript should 
close ! 
The Nightingale that in the branches sang, 
Ah, whence and whither flown again, who knows ! 

— Omar Khayyam, 



Out - of- Doors 45 



Gladness of woods, skies, waters, all in one, 
The bobolink has come, and, like the soul 
Of the sweet season vocal in a bird, 
Gurgles in ecstasy we know not what, 
Save June! Dear June ! Now God be praised Jor June. 

— Lowell. 



O goodly damp smell of the ground ! 

O rough sweet bark of the trees ! 

O clear sharp cracklings of sound ! 

O life that's a-thrill and a-bound 

With the vigor of boyhood and morning, and the 

noontide's rapture of ease ! 
Was there ever a weary heart in the world ? 
A lag in the body's urge or a flag of the spirit's 

wings ? 
Did a man's heart ever break 
For a lost hope's sake ? 
For here there is lilt in the quiet and calm in the 

quiver of things. 

— Richard Hovey* 



46 Out - of - Doors 

To-day the roses have brought into my little 
patch of garden the hues with which sun and sea 
proclaimed their everlasting marriage in the twi- 
light of yestereven. In the deep, passionate heart 
of these splendid flowers, fragrant since they 
bloomed in Sappho's hand centuries ago, this 
sublime wedlock is annually celebrated ; earth 
and sky meet and commingle in this miracle of 
color and sweetness, and when I carry this lovely 
flower into my study all the poets fall silent ; here 
is a depth of life, a radiant outcome from the 
heart of mysteries, a hint of unimagined beauty, 
such as they have never brought to me in all 
their seeking. 

— Hamilton Wright Mabie. 

The whole atmosphere has a luminous serenity, 
a limpid clearness. The islands are like swans 
swimming in a golden stream. Peace, splendor, 
boundless space! ... I long to catch the 
wild bird, happiness, and tame it. These morn- 
ings impress me indescribably. They intoxicate 
me, they carry me away. I feel beguiled out of 
myself, dissolved in sunbeams, breezes, perfumes, 
and sudden impulses of joy. And yet all the time 
I pine for I know not what intangible Eden. 

— A mief s Journal. 



Out-of-Doors 49 



There are few sights in Nature more restful to 
the soul than a daisied field in June. Whether 
it be at the dewy hour of sunrise, with blithe 
matin songs still echoing among the tree tops, or 
while the luxuriant splendor of noontide fills the 
delicate tints of the early foliage with a pure glory 
of light, or in that more pensive time when long 
shadows are thrown eastward and the fresh 
breath of the sea is felt, or even under the solemn 
mantle of darkness, when all forms have faded 
from sight and the night air is musical with the 
murmurs of innumerable insects : amid all the 
varying moods through which the daily cycle 
runs, the abiding sense is of unalloyed happiness, 
the profound tranquillity of mind and heart that 
nothing ever brings save the contemplation of 
perfect beauty. 

One's thought is carried back for the moment 
to that morning of the world when God looked 
upon His work and saw that it was good. 

—John Fiske. 



50 Out - of- Doors 

In June 'tis good to lie beneath a tree 
While the blithe season comforts every sense, 
Steeps all the brain in rest, and heals the heart, 
Brimming it o'er with sweetness unawares, 
Fragrant and silent as that rosy snow 
"Wherewith the pitying apple-tree fills up 
And tenderly lines some last-year robin's nest. 

— Lowell. 



'Twas one of the charmed days 

When the genius of God doth flow ; 

The wind may alter twenty different ways, 

A tempest cannot blow ; 

It may blow north, it still is warm ; 

Or south, it still is clear ; 

Or east, it smells like a clover-farm ; 

Or west, no thunder fear. 

— Emerson, 



And what is so rare as a day in June ? 

Then, if ever, come perfect days ; 
Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune, 
And over it softly her warm ear lays. 

— LowelL 



Out-of-Doors 51 



WORLDLINESS. 

The World is too much with us ; late and soon, 
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; 
Little we see in nature that is ours ; 

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon ! 

This sea that bares her bosom to the moon, 
The winds that will be howling at all hours 
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers, 

For this, for everything, we are out of tune ; 

It moves us not. Great God ! I'd rather be 

A Pagan, suckled in a creed outworn, — 
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, 

Have glimpses that would make me less for- 
lorn ; 
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea ; 
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. 

— Wordsworth. 



52 Out-of-Doors 



NOCTURNE. 

Up to her chamber window 
A slight wire trellis goes, 
And up this Romeo's ladder 
Clambers a bold white rose. 

I lounge in the ilex shadows ; 
I see the lady lean, 
Unclasping her silken girdle 
The curtain's folds between. 

She smiles on her white-rose lover, 
She reaches out her hand 
And helps him in at the window — 
I see it where I stand ! 

To her scarlet lip she holds him 
And kisses him many a time — 
Ah me ! it was he that won her 
Because he dared to climb ! 

— Aldrich, 



Out - of- Doors 53 



THE SHEPHERDESS. 

She walks — the lady of my delight — 

A shepherdess of sheep. 
Her flocks are thoughts. She keeps them 
white ; 

She guards them from the steep. 
She feeds them on the fragrant height, 

And folds them in for sleep. 

She roams maternal hills and bright, 

Dark valleys safe and deep. 
Into that tender breast at night 

The chastest stars may peep. 
She walks — the lady of my delight — 

A shepherdess of sheep. 

She holds her little thoughts in sight, 

Though gay they run and leap. 
She is so circumspect and right ; 

She has her soul to keep. 
She walks — the lady of my delight — 

A shepherdess of sheep. 

— Alice MeynelL 



54 Out-of-Doors 

Flowers are the sweetest things that God ever 
made and forgot to put a soul into. 

— Henry Ward Beecher. 



Since His blessed kingdom was first established 
in the green fields, by the lakeside, with humble 
fishermen for its subjects, the easiest way into it 
hath ever been through the wicket-gate of a lowly 
and grateful fellowship with nature. He that 
feels not the beauty and blessedness and peace 
of the woods and meadows that God hath be- 
decked with flowers for him, even while he is 
yet a sinner, how shall he learn to enjoy the un- 
fading bloom of the celestial country if he ever 
become a saint ? 

— * Henry van Dyke. 



Each bud flowers but once and each flower has 
but its minute of perfect beauty ; so, in the gar- 
den of the soul, each feeling has, as it were, its 
flowering instant, its one and only moment of 
expansive grace and radiant kingship. 

— Amiel's yournal. 

* From " The Ruling Passion." Copyright, 1901, by Charles Scrlbner's Sons. 



Out - of- Doors 55 



A willow-wren still remembered his love, and 
whispered about it to the silent fir tops, as in 
after days we turn the pages of letters, withered 
as leaves, and sigh. So gentle, so low, so tender 
a song the willow-wren sang that it could scarce 
be known as the voice of a bird, but was like that 
of some yet more delicate creature with the heart 
of a woman. 

— Richard Jeffries. 



If we had never before looked upon the earth, 
but suddenly came to it man or woman grown, 
set down in the midst of a summer mead, would 
it not seem to us a radiant vision ? The hues, 
the shapes, the song and life of birds, above all 
the sunlight, the breath of heaven, resting on it ; 
the mind would be filled with its glory, unable to 
grasp it, hardly believing that such things could 
be mere matter and no more. Like a dream of 
some spirit-land it would appear, scarce fit to be 
touched lest it should fall to pieces, too beautiful 
to be long watched lest it should fade away. 

— Richard Jeffries. 



56 Out - of- Doors 



Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, 
The bridal of the earth and sky. 

— George Herbert, 



What a depth of tender color fills the arch of 
heaven as it bends over this playground of the 
blooming and beauty-laden forces of nature ! The 
great summer clouds, shaping their courses to in- 
visible harbors across the trackless aerial sea, 
love to drop anchor here and slowly trail their 
mighty shadows, vainly striving for something 
that shall make them fast. 

Hamilton Wright Mabie. 



Flower in the crannied wall, 

I pluck you out of the crannies ; 

Hold you here, root and all, in my hand, 

Little flower, — but if I could understand 

What you are, root and all, and all in all, 

I should know what God and man is. 

— Tennyson. 





Here are%weej^peas, on tiptoe for a flight: 
With wings ^pf gentle flush o'er delicate white. 

Keats 




Out- of- Doors 59 

Few flowers bloomed for me upon the lone- 
some rock ; but I made the most of all I had, and 
neither knew of nor desired more. Ah, how 
beautiful they were ! Tiny stars of crimson sor- 
rel, threaded on their long brown stems ; the 
blackberry blossoms in bridal white ; the sur- 
prise of the blue-eyed grass ; the crowfoot flow- 
ers, like drops of yellow gold spilt about among 
the short grass and over the moss ; the rich, 
blue-purple beach-pea ; the sweet, spiked ger- 
mander, and the homely, delightful yarrow that 
grows thickly on all the islands. Sometimes its 
broad clusters of dull white bloom are stained a 
lovely reddish-purple, as if with the light of sun- 
set. I never saw it colored so elsewhere. 

— Ceha Thaxter. 



O fair green-girdled mother of mine, 

Sea, that art clothed with the sun and the rain, 
Thy sweet, hard kisses are strong like wine, 

Thy large embraces are keen like pain. 
Save me and hide me with all thy waves, 
Find me one grave of thy thousand graves, 
Those pure cold populous graves of thine, 

Wrought without hand in a world without stain. 

— Swinburne. 



60 Out - of- Doors 

THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS. 

This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, 

Sails the unshadowed main — 

The venturous bark that flings 
On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings 
In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings, 

And coral reefs lie bare, 
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their 
streaming hair. 

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl ; 

Wrecked is the ship of pearl ! 

And every chambered cell 
Where its dim, dreaming life was wont to dwell, 
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell, 

Before thee lies revealed, 
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed ! 

Year after year beheld the silent toil 

That spread his lustrous coil ; 

Still, as the spiral grew, 
He left the past year's dwelling for the new, 
Stole with soft step its shining archway through, 

Built up its idle door, 
Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the 
old no more. 



Out ■ of - Doors 61 

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee, 

Child of the wandering sea, 

Cast from her lap forlorn ! 
From thy dead lips a clearer note is born 
Than ever Triton blew from wreathad horn ! 

While on mine ear it rings, 
Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice 
that sings : 



Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, 
As the swift seasons roll ! 
Leave thy low-vaulted past ! 
Let each new temple, nobler than the last, 
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, 

Till thou at length art free, 
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting 
sea! 

—Holmes. 



62 Out - of- Doors 

The woods are glistening as fresh and fair as if 
they had been new-created overnight. The 
water sparkles with merriment, and tiny waves 
are dancing and singing all along the shore. 
Scarlet berries of the mountain-ash hang around 
the lake like a necklace of coral. A pair of king- 
fishers dart back and forth across the bay in 
flashes of living blue. A black eagle swings 
silently around in his circle, far up in the cloud- 
less sky. The air is full of pleasant sounds, but 
there is no noise. __* Henry van Dyke. 

Perfect weather for an outdoor July merry- 
making . . . Nature seems to make a hot 
pause just then — all the loveliest flowers are 
gone ; the sweet time of early growth and vague 
hopes is past ; and yet the time of harvest and in- 
gathering is not come, and we tremble at the pos- 
sible storms that may ruin the precious fruit in the 
moment of its ripeness. The woods are all of 
one dark monotonous green ; the wagon-loads 
of hay no longer creep along the lanes, scattering 
their sweet-smelling fragments on the blackberry 
branches ; the pastures are often a little tanned, 
yet the corn has not got its last splendor of red 
and gold. —George Eliot. 

* From " Fisherman's Luck." Copyright 1899, by Charles Scribner's 
Sons. 



Out - of- Doors 63 

At night the air carries a heavier freight of 
woody and vegetable odors than during the hours 
of sunlight ; the breeze advises us of a new Orient 
or Spice Islands, discovered in the familiar latitude 
of our fields, bringing the scent of blossoming clover 
and grain. Brushing along some tangled border, 
we guess " in embalmed darkness " that the milk- 
weed is in bloom, though its perfume bears a re- 
minder of spring and the hyacinth. Here also is 
the evening primrose, whose flower ought to be 
as dear to the night as the daisy is to the day ; 
and why should there not be a night's eye on the 
floral records ? 

— Edith M. Thomas. 



Above, the clear sky was full of stars, and among 
them the beautiful planet Jupiter shone serene. 
The sky was of a lovely night blue ; it was an 
hour to think, to dream, to revere, to love — a time 
when, if ever it will, the soul reigns, and the 
coarse, rude acts of day are forgotten in the 
aspirations of the inmost mind. 

The night was calm — still ; it was in no haste 
to do anything — it had nothing it needed to do. 
To be, is enough for the stars. 

— Richard Jeffries. 



64 Out - of- Doors 



THE SONG OF THE SINGER. 

Day long upon the dreaming hills, 
One watched the idle hours fade by 

And had no thought of other thing 
Than waving grass and summer sky. 

And all the wilding scents and sounds 
The lavish-hearted season brought 

He made his own, and prisoned them 
Within the little songs he wrought. 

While he was singing, in the town 
His busy brethren bought and sold, 

And got them place and circumstance, 
And all the pride and pomp of gold. 

But when the night came with the stars, 
And on the hills her silence laid, 

He, homeward turning, bore with him 
Naught save the careless songs he made, 

" O Prodigal ! " his brothers cried, 
" And have you done no better thing ? 

And is it thus you spend your day — 
To dream in sunshine and to sing ? " 



Out - of- Doors 65 



But he, remembering those still hours 
The dream had made so eloquent — 

The waving grass, the summer sky, 
The purple hill-side — smiled, content.* 

— Arthur Ketchum* 



Hast thou named all the birds without a gun ? 
Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk ? 

— Emerson. 



Mounting toward the upland again, I pause 
reverently as the hush and stillness of twilight 
come upon the woods. It is the sweetest, ripest 
hour of the day. And as the hermit's evening 
hymn goes up from the deep solitude below me, 
I experience that serene exaltation of sentiment 
of which music, literature and religion are but the 
faint types and symbols. 

— Burroughs. 



♦From " Lippincott'i Magazine." Copyright 1900 by The J. B. Lippincott Co. 



66 Out-of-Door 



Old earth, how beautiful thou art ! 
Though restless fancy wander wide 
And sigh in dreams for spheres more blest, 
Save for some trouble, half-confessed, 
Some least misgiving, all my heart 
With such a world were satisfied. 
Had every day such skies of blue, 
Were men all wise, and women true, 
Might youth as calm as manhood be, 
And might calm manhood keep its lore 
And still be young — and one thing more, 
Old earth were fair enough for me. 



Ah, sturdy world, old patient world ! 
Thou hast seen many times and men ; 
Heard jibes and curses at thee hurled 
From cynic lip and peevish pen. 
But give the mother once her due : 
Were women wise, and men all true — 
And one thing more that may not be, 
Old earth were fair enough for me. 

— Edward Rowland SHU 




High on the crest of the blossoming grasses, 

Bending and swaying with face toward the sky, 

Stirred by the lightest west wind as it passes, 
Hosts of the silver-white daisy-stars He. 

Margaret Deland 




Out-of-Doors 69 



Would you for a while shut out the earth and 
fill your eye with the heavens, lie down, some 
summer day, on the great mother's lap, with a 
soft grass pillow under your head ; then look 
around and above you, and see how slight, appar- 
ently, is your terrestrial environment, how fore- 
shortened has become the foreground, — only a 
few nodding bents of blossomed grass, a spray of 
clover with a bumble-bee probing for honey, and 
in the distance, perhaps, the billowy outline of 
the diminished woods. What else you see is the 
blue of heaven inimitably stretched above and 
around you. You seem to be lying not so much 
on the surface of the earth as at the bottom of the 
sky. Under this still, transparent sea, "deeper 
than did ever plummet sound," your own 
thoughts and imaginings have become a treasure- 
trove of inestimable wealth and rarity. You do 
not care to move, lest in so doing you break the 
deep sky charm, and your treasure-trove vanish. 

— Edith M. Thomas. 



70 Out - of- Doors 



O my life, have we not had seasons 
That only said, Live and rejoice? 
That asked not for causes and reasons, 

But made us all feeling and voice ? 
When we went with the winds in their blowing, 

When nature and we were peers, 
And we seemed to share in the flowing 
Of the inexhaustible years ? 
Have we not from the earth drawn juices 
Too fine for earth's sordid uses ? 
Have I heard, have I seen 
All I feel and I know ? 
Doth my heart overween ? 
Or could it have been 

Long ago ? 



Out-of-Doors 71 



Sometimes a breath floats by me, 
An odor from Dreamland sent, 
That makes the ghost seem nigh me 
Of a splendor that came and went, 
Of a life lived somewhere, I know not 

In what diviner sphere, 
Of memories that stay not and go not, 
Like music heard once by an ear 
That cannot forget or reclaim it, 
A something so shy, it would shame it 

To make it a show, 
A something too vague, could I name it, 

For others to know, 
As if I had lived it or dreamed it, 
As if I had acted or schemed it, 
Long ago ! 

— Lowell. 



72 Out-of-Doors 



About the ist of August the delicate ear, no 
less than the clear sight, can detect the wane of 
summer. It is no use trying to comfort yourself 
with the calendar : there is a still small voice in 
the atmosphere. There will be sultry days and 
close nights and volleying showers, but, in spite 
of all, there is a growing restfulness, as if the 
zest of it were over and the lusty hours had 
grown mature. The first intimation will come 
from the cricket that ticks the transitions of the 
heyday in the grass, and presently the prelimin- 
ary creak of the cicada will remind you that the 
coming six weeks lead up to the frost. 

— -J, P. Mowbray. 



The path of nature is indeed a narrow one, and it 
is only the immortals that seek it, and, when they 
find it, do not find themselves cramped therein. 

— Lowell. 



Out - of- Doors 73 



LONG SUMMER DAYS. 

Long summer days are my desire : 
Red suns that drop as globes of fire 
Behind the sloped fields white with weed : 
Warm winds, that waft the wandering seed 
With silvery plume, now low, now higher : 
Pale clematis that o'er the brier 
Runs with frail feet that never tire 
Beside rough roads : your gifts I need, 

Long summer days ! 



Vet come not, O profane ones ! nigher, 
If in your stars of severance dire 
Of dear companionship decreed : 
For then, alas ! ye were indeed, 
Too far outstripping my desire, 

Long summer days ! 
— Helen Gray Cone. 



74 Out - of - Doors 



A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT. 

What was he doing, the great god Pan, 

Down in the reeds by the river ? 
Spreading ruin and scattering ban, 
Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat, 
And breaking the golden lilies afloat 
'With the dragon-fly by the river. 

He tore out a reed, the great god Pan, 
From the deep cool bed of the river : 

The limpid water turgidly ran, 

And the broken lilies a-dying lay, 

And the dragon-fly had fled away, 
Ere he brought it out of the river. 

High on the shore sate the great god Pan, 

'While turbidly ran the river ; 
And hacked and hewed as a great god can, 
With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed, 
Till there was not a sign of a leaf indeed 

To prove it fresh from the river. 

He cut it short, did the great god Pan, 
(How tall it grew by the river !) 

Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man, 

Steadily from the outside ring, 

And notched the poor dry empty thing 
In holes, as he sate by the river. 



Out - of- Doors 75 

« This is the way ', laughed the great god Pan, 

(Laughed as he sate by the river,) 
* The only way, since gods began 
To make sweet music, they could succeed.' 
Then dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed, 
He blew in power by the river. 

Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan, 

Piercing sweet by the river ! 
Blinding sweet, O great god Pan ! 
The sun on the hill forgot to die, 
And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly 

Came back to dream on the river. 

Yet half a beast is the great god Pan, 

To laugh as he sits by the river, 
Making a poet out of a man: 
The true gods sigh for the cost and pain, — 
For the reed which grows nevermore again 

As a reed with the reeds in the river. 

— Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 



76 Out - of- Doors 



The slumbrous August noons are full of color 
and movement, when the rhythmic flow of the 
wind is hushed by the measured sweep of cra- 
dles, and the uncut grain on the uplands falls 
evenly in soft, bright waves athwart the sunny 
field. Reclining on its borders, we follow at our 
ease the rapid, graceful motions of raking and 
binding ; for pleasant and picturesque it is to see 
a tall lad grasp his armful and deftly twist the 
shining strands with wonted ease and freedom* 
And when at last the pure golden sheaves stand 
upright against the reddish bronze of the stubble, 
then leaning breathlessly against the massy pile, 
or nestling underneath its warm and quivering 
shadow, how exquisite the sensation that steals 
under the closed eyelids, and over the flushed 
temples, till the very finger-tips and ends of the 
hair begin to burn and creep ! 

— Elaine Goodale. 



SEA-WAT 

The tide slips up the silver sand, 

Dark night and rosy day ; 
It brings sea-treasures to the land, 

Then bears them all away. 
On mighty shores from east to west 
It wails, and gropes, and cannot rest. 

O Tide, that still doth ebb and flow 
Through night to golden day: — 
Wit, learning, beauty, come and go, 
Thou giv'st — thou tak'st away. 
But sometime, on some gracious shore, 
Thou shalt lie still and ebb no more, 

Ellen Mackay Hutchinson 






l 4&^ 




Out - of- Doors 79 



And lo ! in a flash of crimson splendor, with 
blazing scarlet clouds running before his chariot, 
and heralding his majestic approach, God's sun 
rises upon the world. 

— Thackeray, 



For days past there have been intangible hints 
of change in earth and air ; the birds are silent, 
and the universal strident note of insect life 
makes more musical to memory the melodies of 
the earlier season. The sense of overflowing 
vitality which pervaded all things a few days ago, 
when the tide was at the flood, has gone ; the 
tide has turned, and already one sees the reced- 
ing movement of the ebb. 

— Hamilton Wright Mabie. 



8o Out-of-Doors 



CROSSING THE BAR. 

Sunset and evening star, 

And one clear call for me ! 
And may there be no moaning of the bar, 

When I put out to sea. 

But such a tide as moving, seems asleep, 

Too full of sound and foam, 
When that which drew from out the boundless 
deep 

Turns again home. 

Twilight and evening bell, 

And after that the dark ! 
And may there be no sadness of farewell, 

When I embark ; 

For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place 

The flood may bear me far, 
I hope to see my Pilot face to face 

When I have cross'd the bar. 

— Tennyson, 



Out - of- Doors 81 



Now came fulfillment of the year's desire, 
The tall wheat, colored by the August fire 
Grew heavy-headed, dreading its decay, 
And blacker grew the elm trees day by day. 
About the edges of the yellow corn, 
And o'er the gardens grown somewhat outworn 
The bees went hurrying to fill up their store ; 
The apple boughs bent over more and more ; 
"With peach and apricot the garden wall 
Was odorous, and the pears began to fall 
From off the high tree with each freshening 
breeze. 

— William Morris, 



The birds, in a new, but less holiday suit, turn 
their faces southward. The swallows flock and 
go ; silently and unobserved, the thrushes go. 
Autumn arrives, bringing finches, warblers, spar- 
rows, and kinglets from the North. Silently the 
procession passes. Yonder hawk, sailing peace- 
fully away till he is lost in the horizon, is a sym- 
bol of the closing season and the departing birds. 

— Burroughs, 



82 Out ■ of- Doors 



TWILIGHT. 

September's slender crescent grows again 
Distinct in yonder peaceful evening red, 
Clearer the stars are sparkling overhead, 

And all the sky is pure, without a stain. 

Cool blows the evening wind from out the West 
And blows the flowers, the last sweet flowers 

that bloom, — 
Pale asters, many a heavy-waving plume 

Of goldenrod that bends as if opprest. 

The summer songs are hushed. Up the lone 
shore 
The weary waves wash sadly, and a grief 
Sounds in the wind, like farewells fond and 
brief. 
The cricket's chirp but makes the silence more. 

Life's autumn comes ; the leaves begin to fall ; 

The moods of spring and summer pass away; 

The glory and the rapture day by day 
Depart, and soon the quiet grave folds all. 



Out - of- Doors 83 

O thoughtful sky, how many eyes in vain 
Are lifted to your beauty, full of tears ! 
How many hearts go back through all the years, 

Heavy with loss, eager with questioning pain, 

To read the dim Hereafter, to obtain 

One glimpse beyond the earthly curtain, where 
Their dearest dwell, where they maybe or e'er 

September's slender crescent shines again ! 

— Celia Thaxter. 



There, alone, I went down to the sea. I stood 
where the foam came to my feet, and looked out 
over the sunlit waters. The great earth bearing 
the richness of the harvest, and its hills golden 
with corn, was at my back, its strength and firm- 
ness under me. The great sun shone above, the 
wide sea was before me, the wind came sweet 
and strong from the waves. The life of the earth 
and the sea, the glow of the sun, filled me. 

— Richard Jeffries. 



84 Out - of- Doors 

September sets her quiet banquets occasionally, 
and, like Hamlet, we eat the air, promise- 
crammed. There are breakfasts of sunrise and 
long hours of aerial lunch, when the atmosphere 
is golden with invisible fruit, and all one can do 
is to feed the senses. Then it is that the old, 
worn earth is very beautiful, as she sits with her 
hands crossed in her bounteous lap. With her 
labor all finished, one might say that she crooned 
softly on a royal death-bed. 

— -J. P. Mowbray. 



This is the month of quiet days, crimson creep- 
ers and blackberries ; of mellow afternoons in the 
ripening garden; of tea under the acacias instead 
of the too shady beeches .... There is a 
feeling about this month that reminds me of 
March and the early days of April, when spring 
is still hesitating on the threshold and the garden 
holds its breath in expectation. There is the 
same mildness in the air, and the sky and grass 
have the same look as then ; but the leaves tell a 
different tale, and the reddening creeper on the 
house is rapidly approaching its last and loveliest 
glory. 

— "Elizabeth and her German Garden." 



z<&W 




Graceful, tossing plume of glowing gold, 
Waving lonely on the rocky ledge; 

Leaning seaward, lovely to behold, 

Clinging to the high cliffs ragged edge. 

Celia Thaxter 




Out - of- Doors 87 



A warm red lies on the hill-side above the 
woods, as if the red dawn stayed there through 
the day ; it is the heath and heather seeds ; and 
higher still, a pale yellow fills the larches. The 
whole of the great hill glows with color under 
the short hours of the October sun ; and over- 
head, where the pine-cones hang, the sky is of 
the deepest azure. The conflagration of the 
woods burning luminously crowds into those 
short hours a brilliance the slow summer does 
not know. 

— Richard "Jeffries. 



But a short time since the trees were alike 
green. Now they are being tried, as by the touch- 
stone, and begin to show characteristic differ- 
ences. How many carats fine is the gold of the 
beech, the walnut, the chestnut ? 

— Edith M. Thomas. 



And Autumn laying here and there 
A fiery finger on the leaves. 

— Tennyson. 



88 Out- of- Doors 



IN SEPTEMBER. 

The beech is dipped in wine ; the shower 
Is burnished ; on the swinging flower 

The latest bee doth sit. 
The low sun stares through dust of gold, 
And o'er the darkening heath and wold 

The large ghost-moth doth flit. 
In every orchard Autumn stands 
With apples in his golden hands. 

— Alexander Smith. 



Along the roadside, like the flowers of gold 
That tawny Incas for their gardens wrought, 
Heavy with sunshine droops the golden-rod, 
And the red pennons of the cardinal flowers 
Hang motionless upon their upright staves. 

— Whittier. 



Out-of-Doors 89 



INFLUENCES. 

Ii quiet autumn mornings would not come, 
With golden light, and haze, and harvest wain, 
And spices of tne dead leaves at my feet ; 
If sunsets would not burn through cloud, and 

stain 
With fading rosy flush the dusky dome ; 
If the young mother would not croon that sweet 
Old sleep-song, like the robin's in the rain ; 
If the great cloud-ships would not float and drift 
Across such blue all the calm afternoon ; 
It night were not so hushed ; or if the moon 
Might pause forever by that pearly rift, 
Nor fill the garden with its flood again ; 
If the world were not what it still must be, 
Then might I live forgetting love and thee. 

— Edward Rowland Sill. 



go Out- of- Doors 



TO AUTUMN. 

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness ! 

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun : 
Conspiring with him how to load and bless 
'With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves 
run; 
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees, 
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core ; 
To swell the gourd and plump the hazel shells 
With a sweet kernel ; to set budding more, 
And still more, later flowers for the bees, 
Until they think warm days will never cease, 
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy 
cells. 

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store ? 
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find 
Thee sitting careless on a granery floor, 

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind ; 
Or on a half- reap' d furrow sound asleep, 

Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy 
hook 
Spares the next swath and all its twined 
flowers; 



Out - of - Doors 91 

And sometime like a gleaner thou dost keep 
Steady thy laden head across a brook ; 
Or by a cider-press with patient look, 

Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by 
hours. 

Where are the songs of Spring ? Ay, where are 
they? 
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, 
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, 
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue ; 
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn 
Among the river sallows, borne aloft 

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies ; 
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn ; 
Hedge-crickets sing ; and now with treble soft 
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft, 
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies. 

— Keats, 



92 Out - of- Doors 



Once more the illimitable days are woven of 
haze and sunshine, and in the long bright wolds 
the buckwheat fields are turning brown, — brown 
streaked with olive and tinged with red, like the 
colors of health on a sunburnt cheek. There are 
dull, dusky reds and tawny golds in the strips of 
woodland that island the plain ; the woodbine 
flings out a scarlet creeper from its background 
of rich maroon, and the ivory walnut slips its 
outer covering of dingy green, while the chestnuts 
in their satin-lined bed are already of a delicate 
fawn- color. 

— Elaine Goodale. 



The air is not balmy, but tart and pungent like 
the flavor of the red-cheeked apples by the road- 
side. In the sky not a cloud, not a speck ; a vast 
dome of blue ether lightly suspended above the 
world. The woods are heaped with color like a 
painter's palette — great splashes of red and orange 
and gold. The ponds and streams bear upon their 
bosoms leaves of all tints, from the deep maroon 
of the oak to the pale yellow of the chestnut. 

— Burroughs 



Out - of- Doors 93 



And so the ripe year wanes. From turfy slopes 
afar the breeze brings delicious, pungent, spicy 
odors from the wild everlasting flowers, and the 
mushrooms are pearly in the grass. I gather the 
seed-pods in the garden beds, sharing their bounty 
with the birds I love so well, for there are enough 
and to spare for us all. Soon will set in the fitful 
weather, with fierce gales and sullen skies and 
frosty air, and it will be time to tuck up safely my 
roses and lilies and the rest for their long winter 
sleep beneath the snow, where I never forget 
them, but ever dream of their wakening in happy 
summers yet to be. 

— Celia Thaxter. 



The sunshine was on them : that early autumn 
sunshine which we should know was not sum- 
mer's, even if there were not the touches of yellow 
on the lime and chestnut ; the Sunday sunshine, 
too, which has more than autumnal calmness for 
the working man : the morning sunshine, which 
still leaves the dew-crystals on the fine gossamer 
webs in the shadow of the bushy hedgerows. 

— George Eliot, 



94 Out - of- Doors 



October is the opal month of the year. It is 
the month of glory, of ripeness. It is the picture 
month. 

— Henry Ward Beecher. 



There is no season when such pleasant and 
sunny spots may be lighted on, and produce so 
pleasant an effect on the feelings, as now in Octo- 
ber. The sunshine is peculiarly genial ; and in 
sheltered places, as on the side of a bank, or of a 
barn or house, one becomes acquainted and 
friendly with the sunshine. It seems to be of a 
kindly and homely nature. And the green grass 
strewn with a few withered leaves looks the more 
green and beautiful for them. In summer or 
spring Nature is farther from one's sympathies. 

— Hawthorne, 



Once more the liberal year laughs out V v 
O'er richer stores than gems or gold ; K - 

Once more with harvest-song and shout 
lis Nature's bloodless triumph told. 

Our common mother rests and sings 

Like Ruth, among her garnered sheaves, 

Her lap is full of goodly things, 

Her brow is bright with autumn leaves. 




Out-of-Doors 97 

What visionary tints the year puts on 
When falling leaves falter through motionless air 

Or numbly cling and shiver to be gone ! 
How shimmer the low flats and pastures bare, 
As with her nectar Hebe Autumn fills 
The bowl between me and those distant 
hills, 
And smiles and shakes abroad her misty tremu- 
lous hair ! 

O'er yon bare knoll the pointed cedar shadows 
Drowse on the crisp, gray moss; the plough- 
man's call 
Creeps faint as smoke from black fresh-furrowed 
meadows ; 
The single crow a single caw lets fall ; 

And all around me every bush and tree 
Says Autumn's here, and Winter soon 
will be, 
Who snows his soft, white sleep and silence 
over all. 

— Lowell. 



98 Out- of- Doors 



The beautiful mountain stream ran swirlingly 
but softly in front of us, weaving and melting into 
confluent and vanishing curves, and making an 
intoxicating chromotype of colour, as it swept in 
under the overhanging shadows and out again 
into the radiant sunlight, murmuring very softly as 
if subdued to the season. Here and there a cardi- 
nal-flower, that leaned over to look at itself out 
of its own green and tangled cloister, shot a spark 
of color downward, and against a gnarled bank 
the water spun silver tissues over the old gold of 
the sand. Somewhere out of sight, we could hear 
the muffled drum-beat of a little cascade pound- 
ing against the wet rock. That was all. It was 
like an oboe uncertainly played. 

—J. P. Mowbray, 



Out - of- Doors 99 



October was mellowing fast, and with it the 
year itself; full of tender hints, in woodland and 
hedgerow, of a course well-nigh completed. From 
all sides that still afternoon you caught the quick 
breathing and sob of the runner nearing the goal. 

— Kenneth Grahame. 



St. Martin's summer is still lingering, and the 
days all begin in mist .... Nothing could 
be lovelier than the last rosebuds, or than the 
delicate gaufred edges of the strawberry leaves 
embroidered with hoar-frost, while above them 
Arachne's delicate webs hung swaying in the 
green branches of the pines — little ball-rooms for 
the fairies, carpeted with powdered pearls, and 
kept in place by a thousand dewy strands, hang- 
ing from above like the chains of a lamp, and 
supporting them from below like the anchors of a 
vessel. These little airy edifices had all the 
fantastic lightness of the elf-world, and all the 
vaporous freshness of dawn. 

— AmieVs Journal 
1. of C. 



ioo Out - of- Doors 



TO S. R. CROCKETT. 

Blows the wind to-day, and the sun and the rain 
are flying, 
Blows the wind on the moors to-day and now, 
Where about the graves of the martyrs the whaups 
are crying, 
My heart remembers how ! 

Gray recumbent tombs of the dead in desert 
places, 
Standing stones on the vacant wine-red moor, 
Hills of sheep, and the homes of the silent van- 
ished races, 
And winds, austere and pure. 

Be it granted me to behold you again in dying, 

Hills of home ! and to hear again the call ; 
Hear about the graves of the martyrs the peewees 
crying, 
And hear no more at all ! 

— Stevenson. 



Out - of- Doors 101 



That time of year thou may'st in me behold, 
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang 
Upon those boughs which shake against the 

cold, — 
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds 

sang. 
In me thou seest the twilight of such day 
As after sunset fadeth in the west, 
Which by and by black night doth take away, 
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest : 
In me thou seest the glowing of such fire, 
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, 
As the death-bed whereon it must expire, 
Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by. 
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love 

more strong, 
To love that well which thou must leave ere 
long. 

— Shakespeare. 



102 Out - of- Doors 



TO THE FRINGED GENTIAN. 

Thou blossom bright with autumn dew, 
And colored with the heaven's own blue, 
That openest when the quiet light 
Succeeds the keen and frosty night. 

Thou comest not when violets lean 
O'er wandering brooks and springs unseen, 
Or columbines, in purple dressed, 
Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden nest. 

Thou waitest late, and com'st alone, 
When woods are bare and birds are flown, 
And frosts and shortening days portend 
The aged year is near his end. 

Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye 
Look through its fringes to the sky, 
Blue — blue — as if that sky let fall 
A flower from its cerulean wall. 

I would that thus, when I shall see 
The hour of death draw near to me, 
Hope, blossoming within my heart, 
May look to heaven as I depart. 

— Btyant. 





AUTUMN SONG 

Red leaf, gold leaf, 
Flutter dov/n the wind : 
Life is brief, oh ! life is brief, 

But Mother Earth is kind; 
From her dear bosom ye shall spring 

To new blossoming. 

The red leaf, the gold leaf, 
They have had their way ; 
Love is long if life be brief, — 

Life is but a day : 
And Love from Grief and Death shall spring 

To new blossoming. 

Ellen Mackay Hutchinson, 




^#^ 




Out - of- Doors 105 

AFFAIRE D' AMOUR. 

One pale November day, 
Flying Summer paused, 

They say : 
And growing bolder, 
O'er rosy shoulder 
Threw to her Lover such a glance, 
That Autumn's heart began to dance. 
(O happy Lover!) 

A leafless Peach-tree bold 
Thought for him she smiled, 

I'm told; 
And, stirred by love, 
His sleeping sap did move, 
Decking each naked branch with green 
To show her that her look was seen ! 
(Alas ! poor Lover !) 

But Summer, laughing, fled, 
Nor knew he loved her ! 

'Tis said 
The Peach-tree sighed, 
And soon he gladly died : 

And Autumn, weary of the chase, 
Came on at Winter's sober pace. 
(O careless Lover !) 

— Margaret Deland. 



io6 Out-of-Doors 



There are some laggard days in November that 
have been left behind by the autumnal procession. 
They are wayward, dilatory, irrelevant days, and 
come in the rear of the retreating season, like 
indolent nymphs that, dressed for the nuptials, 
only arrived for the funeral, and could not abandon 
their voluptuous moods. They wear their bridal 
veils, and look at us reminiscently through clouds 
of mist. These beautiful, dreamy days appear to 
have been thrown off somewhere like fragments 
by the revolving August, and they come along 
like the Leonids, and as softly disappear. We 
call them the Indian summer. 

— y. P. Mowbray. 



Out - of- Doors 107 



The Hirschwald is an enchanted place on such 
an evening, when the mists lie low on the turf, 
and overhead the delicate, bare branches of the 
silver birches stand out clear against the soft sky, 
while the little moon looks down kindly on the 
damp November world. Where the trees thicken 
into a wood, the fragrance of the wet earth and 
rotting leaves kicked up by the horses' hoofs fills 
my soul with delight. I particularly love that 
smell — it brings before me the entire benevolence 
of Nature, for ever working death and decay, so 
piteous in themselves, into the means of fresh 
life and glory, and sending up sweet odors as she 
works. 

— " Elizabeth and her German Garden" 



108 Out - of- Doors 

A spirit haunts the /ear's last hours, 
Dwelling amidst these yellowing bowers : 

To himself he talks ; 
For at eventide, listening earnestly, 
At his work you may hear him sob and sigh 
In the walks ; 

Earthward he boweth the heavy stalks 
Of the mouldering flowers ; 

Heavily hangs the broad sunflower 

Over its grave i* the earth so chilly ; 
Heavily hangs the hollyhock, 
Heavily hangs the tiger-lily. 

— Tennyson. 

The sky was hung with various shades of gray, 
and mists hovered about the distant mountains — 
a melancholy nature. The leaves were falling on 
all sides like the last illusions of youth'under the 
tears of irremediable grief. A brood of chattering 
birds were chasing each other through the shrub- 
beries, and playing games among the branches, 
like a knot of hiding schoolboys. The ground 
strewn with leaves, brown, yellow and reddish ; 
the trees half-stripped, some more, some less, and 
decked in ragged splendors of dark-red, scarlet 
and yellow. 

— AmieVs ^Journal. 




NOVEMBER DAYS 

Flying, flying— 
I watch the swallows flying, 

Flitting south before November snows, 
Leaving the delaying leaves a-dying 

Broken-hearted for the buried rose. 



Follow, foHow— 
Everything must follow ; — 

Even the memory of the summer dies* 
Follow, follow ; good-by, happy swallow 

Flying southward as the summer flies. 

Ellen Mackay Hutchinson 




Out - of- Doors in 



AUTUMN FIRES. 

In the other gardens 

And all up the vale, 
From the'autumn bonfires 

See the smoke trail ! 

Pleasant summer over 
And all the summer flowers, 

The red fire blazes, 

The gray smoke towers. 

Sing a song of seasons ! 

Something bright in all ! 
Flowers in the summer, 

Fires in the fall ! 

— Stevenson. 



H2 Out - of- Doors 

TO THE WEST-WIND. 

wild west-wind, thou breath of autumn's being, 
Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves 

dead 
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, 
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, 
Pestilence-stricken multitudes : O thou 
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed 
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, 
Each like a corpse within its grave, until 
Thine azure sister of the spring shall blow 
Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill 
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) 
With living hues and odors plain and hill : 
Wild spirit, which art moving everywhere ; 
Destroyer and preserver; hear, O hear ! 

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear ; 
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee ; 
A wave to pant beneath thy power and share 
The impulse of thy strength, only less free 
Than thou, O uncontrollable ! If even 

1 were as in my boyhood, and could be 

The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven, 
As then, when to outstrip the skyey speed 
Scarce seemed a vision, I would ne'er have 

striven 
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. 



Out- of- Doors 113 

O, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud ! 

I fall upon the thorns of life ! I bleed ! 

A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed 

One like to thee : tameless and swift and proud. 

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is : 
"What if my leaves are falling like its own ! 
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies 
Will take from both a deep autumnal tone, 
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, spirit, fierce, 
My spirit ; be thou me, impetuous one ! 
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe 
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth ; 
And by the incantation of this verse, 
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth 
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind ! 
Be through my lips to unawakened earth 
The trumpet of a prophecy ! O wind, 
If winter comes, can spring be far behind ? 

—Shelley. 

It was the dawn of winter ; sword in sheath, 
Change veiled and mild, came down the gradual 
air 
With cold slow smiles that hid the doom beneath. 

Five days to die in yet were autumn's, ere 
The last leaf withered from his flowerless wreath. 

— Swinburne, 



H4 Out - of- Doors 



Now through the copse, where the fox is found, 
And over the stream, at a mighty bound, 
And over the high lands, and over the low, 
O'er furrows, o'er meadows, the hunters go ! 
Away ! — as a hawk flies full at its prey, 
So flyeth the hunter, away — away ! 
From the burst at the cover till set of sun, 
When the red fox dies, and — the day is done ! 
Hark y hark / — What sound on the wind is borne f 
9 Tis the conquering voice of the hunter' s horn. 

The horn — the horn / 
The merry i bold voice of the hunter's horn ! 

— Barry Cornwall, 



I never sit by the clustered dead leaves and 
listen to their faint rustlings as the wind moves 
among them but I fancy they are whispering of 
the days gone by. What of the vanished spring- 
tide, when they first timidly looked forth ? They 
greeted the returning birds, the whole merry host 
of northbound warblers, and what startling facts 
of the bird-world they might reveal ! 

— Charles C* Abbott. 



Out - of- Doors 115 



There is nothing to fret us in this change from 
shade to sunshine, from green leaves to brown. 
The world is not dead because of it. While 
the sun looks down upon the woods to-day- 
there arises a sweet odor, pleasant as the breath 
of roses. The world dead indeed! What more 
vigorous and full of life than the mosses covering 
the rich wood-mould ? Before me, too, lies a 
long-fallen tree cloaked in moss greener than the 
summer pastures. Not the sea alone possesses 
transforming magic ; there is also a " wood-change 
into something rich and strange." Never does 
the thought of death and decay centre about such 
a sight. The chickadee drops from the branches 
above, looks the moss-clad log over carefully, 
and, when again poised on an overhanging 
branch, loudly lisps its praises. What if it is 
winter when you witness such things ? One 
swallow may not make a summer, but a single 
chickadee will draw the sting from any winter 
morning. 

■—Charles C. Abbott, 



n6 Out - of- Doors 



The simplicity of winter has a deep moral. The 
return of Nature, after such a career of splendor 
and prodigality, to habits so simple and austere, 
is not lost either upon the head or the heart. It 
is the philosopher coming back from the banquet 
and the wine to a cup of water and a crust of 
bread. 

— Burroughs, 



Now look down ^from your hillside across the 
valley. The trees are leafless, but this is the 
season to study their anatomy ; and did you ever 
notice before how much color there is in the twigs 
of many of them? And the smoke from those 
chimneys is so blue it seems like a feeder of the 
sky into which it flows. 

— Lowell. 




O hemlock tree! O hemlock tree! how faithful 
a? e thy branches ! ^g£> 
Green not alone in summer time, 
But in the winter's frost and rime I 
Q hemlock tree! O hemlock tree! how faithful 
are thy branches! 

Longfellow 



'*& 



P^^f 



Out- of- Doors 119 



REQUIEM. 

December St 1894., 

Under the wide and starry sky, 
Dig the grave and let me lie. 
Glad did I live and gladly die, 
And I laid me down with a will. 
This be the verse you grave for me : 
Here he lies where he longed to be; 
Home is the sailor, home from sea y 
And the hunter home from the hill. 

— Stevenson. 



120 Out-of-Doors 



The preludings of Winter are as beautiful as 
those of Spring. In a gray December day, when, 
as the farmers say, it is too cold to snow, his 
numbed fingers will let fall doubtfully a few star- 
shaped flakes, the snow-drops and anemones that 
harbinger his more assured reign. 

— Lowell. 



There was never a leaf on bush or tree, 
The bare boughs rattled shudderingly ; 

The river was dumb and could not speak, 
For the weaver Winter its shroud had spun ; 

A single crow on the tree-top bleak 

From his shining feathers shed off the cold sun. 

— Lowell. 



Out - of- Doors 121 



The morning was bound in blue and gold. 
Wherever the long shafts of the sun fell, a gold- 
stone sparkle followed ; but the shadows had the 
tint of the lilac, or of an aerified amethyst. The 
children of Aurora perceived that manna had fal- 
len in the night, and went forth to gather it ; but 
they wisely carried neither scrip nor basket, 
knowing they could lay none by for the morrow. 
In May we indeed believed, with the Rosicru- 
cians, that there might be an immortal virtue in 
May-dew ; in December we discover it is lodged 
in the frost. Every blade of grass is shot full of 
minute crystalline arrow-heads, which might be 
drawn out entire, could there be found for the 
task a hand of sufficient coldness and delicacy. 

— Edith M. Thomas. 



122 Out - of- Doors 



The snow which falls in these obvious crystal- 
line patterns is of the lightest and most diaphan- 
ous quality. A broken branch lies upon the 
ground completely covered with this delicate 
counterpane, yet every twig and bud is still 
plainly defined. I have a fancy that I would like 
to see half-blown crimson roses inclosed, but not 
concealed in such a cool white shrine. The sea- 
son which most regard as forbiddingly ascetic — 
has it not its touches of refinement and luxury ? 

— Edith M, Thomas, 



Every leaf and twig was covered with a spark- 
ling ice armor. Even the grasses in exposed 
fields were hung with diamond pendants which 
jingled merrily when brushed by the foot of the 
traveller It was as if some superin- 
cumbent stratum of the earth had been removed 
in the night, exposing to light a bed of untarnished 
crystals. 

— Thoreau, 



Out- of- Doors 123 



Down swept the chill wind from the mountain 
peak, 
From the snow five thousand summers old ; 
On open wold and hill-top bleak 

It had gathered all the cold, 
And whirled it like sleet, on the wanderer's cheek; 
It carried a shiver everywhere 
From the unleafed boughs and pastures bare. 

— Lowell, 



Look up at the miracle of the falling snow, — the 
air a dizzy maze of whirling, eddying flakes, noise- 
lessly transforming the world, the exquisite crys- 
tals dropping in ditch and gutter, and disguising 
in the same suit of spotless livery all objects upon 
which they fall. 

— Burroughs. 



The time draws near the birth of Christ : 
The moon is hid ; the night is still ; 
The Christmas bells from hill to hill 

Answer each other in the mist. 

— Tennyson. 



124 Out- of- Doors 



O LITTLE TOWN OF BETHLEHEM, 

O little town of Bethlehem, 

How still we see thee lie ; 
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep 

The silent stars go by ; 
Yet in thy dark streets shineth 

The everlasting light, 
The hopes and fears of all the years 

Are met in thee to-night. 

For Christ is born of Mary, 

And gathered all above, 
While mortals sleep, the angels keep 

Their watch of wondering love. 
Oh, morning stars, together 

Proclaim the holy birth ! 
And praises sing to God the King 

And peace to men on earth. 



Out-of-Doors 125 

How silently, how silently, 

The wondrous gift is given ! 
So God imparts to human hearts 

The blessings of His heaven. 
No ear may hear His coming, 

But in this world of sin, 
Where meek souls will receive Him still, 
The dear Christ enters in. 

O holy Child of Bethlehem ! 

Descend to us, we pray ; 
Cast out our sin, and enter in, 

Be born in us to-day. 
We hear the Christmas angels 

The great, glad tidings tell ; 
O come to us, abide with us, 

Our Lord Emmanuel ! 

— Phillips Brooks, 



126 Out -of- Doors 



A CHRISTMAS GREETING. 

Speed my Thought, oh speed my Thought, 

Over the miles of snow ! 
Never before, to bear to her door 

Love with his looks aglow, 
Had' st thou so far to go ! 

Take for a chime bells of my rhyme 
Over the miles of snow. 

Stand, my Thought, oh stand my Thought ! 

Fled are the miles of snow. 
Call, O Love ! to her window above, 

In the voice her heart must know. 
'Tis the time of mistletoe ; 

Sing in the night to her window alight, 
In the night of stars and snow ! 

— Helen Gray Cone. 




Blow, blow, thou winter wind, 
Thou art not so unkind 

As man's ingratitude ;\ 
Thy tooth is not so keen,* 
Because thou art not seen,. 

Although thy breath be rude. 
Heigh ho! sing heigh ho! unto the green holly; 
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly. 
Then heigh ho ! the holly ! 
This life is most jolly ! " ^?f§8 JF 

Shakespeare 




Out- of- Doors 129 



I never knew before how beautiful the de?d tree 
trunks were. They shone with new colors ; de- 
licious sombres of Vandyke, and soft, dull terra- 
cottas, and deep sage greens, with splashes of 
bronze where the light burnished the boles. The 
vistas shifted and arranged themselves in colon- 
nades and spectral avenues, through which the 
bacchante lights danced, and along which the 
stately cedars and hemlocks, tonsured by the 
snow, stood in priestly gravity, chanting a new 
gloria. Back of all this paganism of the mind 
there was a softer association, somehow emit- 
ting a deeper muffled tone of expectation, as if 
the minster bells of Christmas were already rung 
by the wind, and were reverberating through 
these cathedral aisles. 

— J. P. Mowbray. 



130 Out - of- Doors 



SNOW-FLAKES. 

Out of the bosom of the Air, 

Out of the cloud folds of her garments shaken, 
Over the woodlands brown and bare, 
Over the harvest-fields forsaken, 
Silent and soft, and slow 
Descends the snow. 

Even as our cloudy fancies take 

Suddenly shape in some divine expression, 
Even as the troubled heart doth make 
In the white countenance confession, 
The troubled sky reveals 
The grief it feels. 

This is the poem of the air, 

Slowly in silent syllables recorded ; 
This is the secret of despair, 

Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded, 
Now whispered and revealed 
To wood and field. 

— Longfellow. 



Out - of- Doors 131 

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, 
The flying cloud, the frosty light ; 
The year is dying in the night ; 

Ring out, wild bells, and let him die. 

Ring out the old, ring in the new, 
Ring, happy bells, across the snow ; 
The year is going, let him go ; 

Ring out the false, ring in the true. 

Ring out the grief that saps the mind, 
For those that here we see no more ; 
Ring out the feud of rich and poor, 

Ring in redress to all mankind. 

Ring out old shapes of foul disease ; 

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold ; 

Ring out the thousand wars of old 
Ring in the thousand years of peace. 

Ring in the valiant man and free, 
The larger heart, the kindlier hand ; 
Ring out the darkness of the land, 

Ring in the Christ that is to be. 

— Tennyson. 



132 Out -of- Doors 



Darkness and light reign alike. Snow is on the 
ground. Cold is the air. The winter is blossom- 
ing in frost-flowers. Why is the ground hidden ? 
So hath God wiped out the past; so hath He 
spread the earth like an unwritten page for a new 
year! Upon this lies, white and tranquil, the 
emblem of newness and purity, the virgin robes 
of the yet unstained year. 

— Henry Ward Beecher. 



Out - of- Doors 133 



SNOW-BLOOM. 

Where does the snow go, 

So white on the ground ? 
Under May's azure 

No flake can be found. 
Look into the lily 

Some sweet summer hour ; 
There blooms the snow 

In the heart of the flower. 

Where does the love go, 

Frozen to grief? 
Along the heart's fibres 

Its cold thrill is brief. 
The snow-fall of sorrow 

Turns not to dry dust; 
It lives in white blossoms 

Of patience and trust. 

— Lucy Larcom* 



134 Out - of- Doors 



LOVE IN WINTER. 

Between the berried holly-bush 

The Blackbird whistled to the Thrush : 

" Which way did bright-eyed Bella go ? 

Look, Speckled-breast, across the snow, — 

Are those her dainty tracks I see, 

That wind toward the shrubbery ? " 

The Throstle pecked the berries still. 
" No need for looking, Yellow-bill ; 
Young Frank was there an hour ago, 
Half frozen, waiting in the snow ; 
His callow beard was white with rime, 
Tchuck, — 't is a merry pairing time ! " 

" What would you ? " twittered in the Wren ; 
" These are the reckless ways of men. 
I watched them bill and coo as though 
They thought the sign of spring was snow ; 
If men but timed their loves as we, 
'T would save this inconsistency." 



Out - of- Doors 135 

" Nay, Gossip," chirped the Robin, "nay; 
I like their unreflective way. 
Besides I heard enough to show 
Their love is proof against the snow ; — 
* Why wait,' he said, * why wait for May, 
When love can warm a winter's day ? ' " 

— Austin Dobson, 



St. Agnes' Eve — Ah ! bitter chill it was ! 
The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold ; 
The hare limp'd trembling through the frozen 

grass, 
And silent was the flock in woolly fold. 

— Keats. 



Drag on, long night of winter, in whose heart, 
Nurse of regrets, the dead spring yet has part ! 
Drag on, O night of dreams ! O night of fears ! 
Fed by the summers of the bygone years ! 

— William Morris. 



136 Out - of- Doors 



IN FEBRUARY. 

Like mimic meteors the snow 
In silence out of heaven sifts, 

And wanton winds that wake and blow 
Pile high their monumental drifts. 

And looking through the window-panes 
I see, 'mid loops and angles crossed, 

The dainty geometric skeins 

Drawn by the fingers of the Frost. 

'Tis here at dawn where comes his love, 
All eager and with smile benign, 

A golden Sunbeam from above, 
To read the Frost's gay valentine. 

— Frank Dempster Sherman, 



IN SNOW 

The golden meadows sleep in snow; 
The arrowy winds about them blow, 
And icy sparkles come and go. 

The golden meadows sleep in snow; 
But underneath the grasses grow 
And daisies dream of bud and blow. 

The golden meadows sleep in snow ; 
My little nfcaiden, dost thou know 
How half unconscious love may grow? 



Ellen Mackay Hutchinson 




'TIN 



\h 



V 







2d 



^%W^W"U-' 



Out -of- Doors 139 



BEFORE SUNRISE IN WINTER. 

A purple cloud hangs half-way down ; 

Sky, yellow gold below ; 
The naked trees, beyond the town, 

Like masts against it show. 

Bare masts and spars of our earth-ship, 
With shining snow-sails furled ; 

And through the sea of space we slip, 
That flows all round the world. 

— Edward Rowland Sill. 



The moon above the eastern wood 
Shone at its full ; the hill-range stood 
Transfigured in the silver flood, 
Its blown snows flashing cold and keen, 
Dead white, save where some sharp ravine 
Took shadow, or the sombre green 
Of hemlocks turned to pitchy black 
Against the whiteness at their back. 
For such a world and such a night 
Most fitting that unwarning light, 
Which only seemed where'er it fell 
To make the darkness visible. 

— Whittier. 



140 Out - of- Doors 



In Winter the earth is frost bound, and in- 
crusted with ice and snow * but soon the voice 
of Spring will call, and everywhere there shall be 
life, and growth, and beauty ; so it is with man, 
his winter has been long and dark ; but the sun 
of God's love shall shine, and the crusts of 
tyranny and the frosts of oppression shall melt 
away beneath its rays, and the humblest as well 
as the loftiest creature shall yet stand in the light 
and liberty of the sons of God. 

— Henry Ward Beecher. 



Late February days ; and now, at last, 

Might you have thought that winter's woe was 

past; 
So fair the sky was, and so soft the air. 
The happy birds were hurrying here and there, 
As something soon would happen. Reddened now 
The hedges, and in gardens many a bough 
'Was overbold of buds. Sweet days, indeed, 
Although past road and bridge, through wood 

and mead, 
Swift ran the brown stream, swirling by the grass, 
And in the hillside hollows snow yet was. 

— William Morris, 



Out - of- Doors 141 



When icicles hang by the wall, 

And Dick the shepherd blows his nail, 
And Tom bears logs into the hall, 

And milk comes frozen home in pail, 
'When blood is nipped, and ways be foul, 
Then nightly sings the staring owl, 

To who ; 
To-whit, to-who, a merry note, 
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot. 

When all aloud the wind doth blow, 

And coughing drowns the parson's saw, 
And birds sit brooding in the snow, 

And Marian's nose looks red and raw, 
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl, 
Then nightly sings the staring owl, 

To-who ; 
To-whit, to-who, a merry note, 
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot. 

— Shakespeare, 



142 Out - of- Doors 



Bright February days have a stronger charm of 
hope about them than any other days in the year. 
One likes to pause in the mild rays of the sun, and 
look over the gates at the patient plow-horses 
turning at the end of the furrow, and think that 
the beautiful year is all before one. The birds 
seem to feel just the same ; their notes are as 
clear as the clear air. There are no leaves on the 
trees and hedgerows, but how green all the grassy 
fields are ! and the dark purplish brown of the 
plowed earth and the bare branches is beautiful 
too. What a glad world this looks like, as one 
drives or rides along the valleys and over the 
hills ! 

— George Eliot. 




Oh, a dainty plant is the ivy green, 
That creepeth o'er ruins oldi* 

Of right choice food are his meals, I ween, 
In his cell so lone and cold, 

Creeping where no life is seen, 

A rare old plant is the ivy green. 

Dickens 




Out - of- Doors 145 



*RESURGAM. 

All silently, and soft as sleep, 
The snow fell, flake on flake. 

Slumber, spent Earth ! and dream of flowers 
Till spring-time bid you wake. 

Again the deadened bough shall bend 
With blooms of sweetest breath. 

Oh, miracle of miracles, 
This life that follows death ! 

— Aldrich. 



♦From Harper's Magazine, Copyright 1901, Harper & Bros. 



INDEX 



FAGK 

Abbott, Charles C. 114,115 

Aldrich, Thomas Bailey 41, 52, 145 

Amiel's Journal 22, 48, 54, gg, 108 

Bacon, Francis 4 

Beecher, Henry Ward 54, g4, 132, 140 

Browning, Robert . . . . . . . 12, 28 

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett ..... 74 

Bryant, William Cullen 16, 102 

Brooks, Phillips 124 

Burroughs, John . . . . .12, 65, 81, g2, 116, 123 
Carman, Bliss ........ 14 

Cone, Helen Gray 21, 44, 73, 126 

Cornwall, Barry 114 

Deland, Margaret 67, 105 

Dobson, Austin 134 

Dickens, Charles ....... 143 

Elizabeth and Her German Garden . . . 3g, 84, 107 

Eliot, George . . . . . . 62, g3, 142 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo ..... 42, 50, 65 

Fiske, John 4g 

Grahame, Kenneth . . . . . . 13, 38, gg 

Goodale, Elaine 13, 37, 76, g2 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel ...... g4 

Herbert, George 56 

Holmes, Oliver Wendell 60 

Hovey, Richard 47 

Hutchinson, Ellen Mackay . . -77, 103, iog, 137 



148 



Index 



Ingelow, Jean 

Jeffries, Richard 

Keats, John . 

Ketchum, Arthur 

Kingsley, Charles 

Larcom, Lucy 

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth 

Lowell, James Russell 1 1 , 2g, 40 

Mabie, Hamilton Wright 

Meynell, Alice 

Milton, John 

Morris, Lewis 

Morris, William 

Mowbray, J. P. 

Omar Khayyam 

Peacock, Thomas Love 

Ruskin, John 

Shakespeare, William . 

Shelley, Percy Bysshe 

Sherman, Frank Dempster 

Sill, Edward Rowland 

Smith, Alexander 

Swinburne, Algernon Charles 

Stevenson, Robert Louis 

Tennyson, Alfred 

Thackeray, William Makepeace 

Thaxter, Celia 

Thomas, Edith M. 

Thoreau, Henry David 

Van Dyke, Henry 

Whittier, John Greenleaf 

Wordsworth, William 



PAGE 

23 

24, 27, 34, 55, 63, 83, 87 

. 57, 90, 135 

. . 64 

25 

35, 133 
23, 27,43, 117, 130 
45,47,50,70,72,97,116,120,123 
48, 56, 79 
53 
27 
26 
81, 135, MO 
72, 84, g8, 106, 129 

. 15, 44 
26 

37 

ioi, 127, 141 

112 

136 

66, 89, 139 

88 

28, 59, 1x3 

7, 100, in, 119 

56, 80, 87, 108, 123, 131 

79 

59, 8a, 85, 93 

31, 63, 69, 87, in, 122 

. 12, 122 

31, 3*, 43, 54,62 

. 88, 95, 139 

. i9,5i 



902 



1 COPY DEL, TO CAT. S)fV. 
SEP, 19 1902 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



021 100 738 2 



